Soul!; 53; Conversation Between Giovanni and Baldwin. Part 1

This series is made possible in part by a grant from IMS into disciplinary metropolitan systems incorporated. The following program is from MET. It's so, and this is your announcer, Joe Dent. And tonight on Soul, a conversation between James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni. And now, here to introduce the program is the producer of Soul, L .S .H. Good evening. I'm L .S. Haystep and I welcome you to another Soul episode. One of the miracles of this universe that we deal with is the way it can use something as cold and gray and as impersonal as an electron. These electrons that fill your television

screen to bring you an experience as warm and as rich and as human as a program you're about to see. And we hear it so like extremely proud that we have been able to put together two programs. Conversations between two brilliant and eloquent members of the Black family, Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin. We had to travel to London in order to take these programs and we then edited them to fit within our time schedule or one hour. Tonight you will be seeing the first hour of this conversation. And next week we will air the second part. Mr. Baldwin who is now living abroad is the author of Going to Meet the Man. Tell me how long the train's been gone. The fire next time. Another country. Nobody knows my name. Giovanni's room. Notes of a native son. Go tell it on the mountain. And a wrap on race with Margaret Mead. James Baldwin is also the author of

the plays, Blues for Mr. Charlie and the Amen corner. Nikki, as most of our viewers know, is an old friend of souls. And one of quite a few beautiful people who has always made her time, energy and thinking available to us. She is the author of Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgment, Recreation, Gemini and Spin a Soft Black Song. She also edited an anthology of Black Female Voices titled Night Comes Softly. So here now are Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin in conversation. Jimmy, I'm really curious. Why did you move to a Europe? Well, why or when? Why? I don't think I know him. I've moved to Europe and so far as I can say I did. I moved to Europe first in 1948 because I

was trying to become a writer and couldn't find in my surroundings in my country. A certain stamina, a certain corroboration that I needed. For example, no one ever told me that I was going to do my words in my laptop and no one ever told me that the push was black. And as far as I knew when I was very, very young, there was nothing. And as far as my father knew, which is much more important, there was nothing called a black writer. You know? So now when I was 24, I split. I went to the King of Paris and worked and went home in 1957 and worked and stayed and was based in New York really in and out because I was working on the one hand making speeches and trying to write. And I never was able to write in New York so I would go out into my work and come back into my work because you see what I mean.

And that all ended in a way, or somebody else began after Martin Luther King was murdered. And I spent a long time in limbo and at the moment I'm based in the South of France, but there was anyway ever to leave America. You know, it would be a fool to think that there was someplace I could go where I wouldn't carry myself with me. Or there was so much me to live if I pretended I didn't have the responsibilities which in fact I do have. So in a way, I'm a cat trying to make it in the world because I'm condemned to live in the world. And then condemn the sense of when you're young and also when you're old. You would rather have around you unexpected things to know where everything is. And it's a little difficult but it's very valuable to be forced to move one place to another and deal with another set of situations all the time. And to accept that this is going to be, it

is your life and to use it. It means you, in a sense, become neither white nor black. And you learn a great deal about... Your hosts are a great deal about the history out of which all these words and conceptions and flags and martyrdoms. Come. There's something that eventually I'm sure we're going to hit. So we just have to work it out. All right. Okay, but let's start. Let's say with everybody's protest novel, which I think came out in 48. It came out in 49. And that was six. I thought it was magnificent pieces. I went to first grade. I said, my God, somebody's really talking. How do you stand in relationship, say, to that novel now? To that, everybody's not that I say now. Yeah. What do you think about, let's say, the younger writers of which I'm one, within that context, are we in your opinion like moving ahead, are we moving out of that basic set of the same? Oh, I think I

think it's very difficult to say it, you know, it can be misunderstood. But you have no idea, and I can never express to you, do I understand I depend on you, or well, I mean, you, Nikki Giovanni, and also in your generation, you know, I can even say you have no idea, and I can never express to you, though, because I have no way, I'm not right to say it, but I'm very proud of you. Something has moved, things have moved in a very strange way, and maybe inexpressible. If I wrote that essay today, for example, I would be writing a very different essay out of a very different kind of problem, I think that quite realizing it, and no matter what our hang -ups are, as of this very moment, the hang -up of my generation, or the hang -up of your generation, you know, and the terrible situation of which all of us find ourselves, it is

one thing has changed, and that is the attitude that black people have toward themselves. Now, the thing that changed, I don't want to be romantic about it, a great deal of confusion and coherence, you know, will go on for a very long time, you know. But that was inevitable. That moment had to come, too, you know, and everybody's put us now what I was trying for myself, at first of all, to elude state for myself, of theology and the effect of theology, which I, at the moment realized I carried in myself, you know, it was not the world that was my oppressor only, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do it to yourself. You become a collaborator, and a accomplice of your own murderers, because you believe the same things they do, you think it's important to be white, and you think it's important to be white. They think it is shameful to be black, and you think it is shameful to be black, and you have no corroboration around you of any other sense of life, you know, all those collaborations which are

around you, are in terms of white majority standards, so deplorable they frighten you to death, they don't eat watermelon, you know, you get so rich you can't dance, you know, you hardly move by the time you're 14, you know, you're always scrubbed and shining, you know, a parody of God knows what, you know, because no white verses I've been in, no, as clean as you have been forced to become, and you've got to begin to break out of all of that, and try to become yourself, you know, it's hard for anybody, but it's very hard if you're born black in a white society, hard because you've got to divorce yourself from the standards of that society, the danger of your generation, if I may say so, you know, pursue this like life, is this a substitute one romanticism for another, you know, because in fact, these categories, to put

it simply, but you know, with a certain brutal truth, these categories are commercial categories, you know, there is a reason that when you and I were slaves, my son produced out of your body was by definition of slave, but the master son also produced out of your body, depending on his color, if he was light enough, he could be, he could live in the big house, and if he wasn't, he took his condition of his mother. He was still a slave. He was a slave, he was a slave, he was a slave because even though he went, he might be the master son, the master could make money off of his son. The whole institution was threatened if a slave woman could produce a free man, and the lemma begins there, do you see what I mean? And it's who I said dilemma, if it's a slave woman

began to free man, it's a slave woman by law, I said the reason that commercial, to produce a free man, because once you have a free man out of the body of a slave, you no longer have a slave, but it's very hard to recognize the standards which have almost killed you, are really American -town standards, they're based on cotton, they're based on oil, they're based on peanuts, they're based on profits, to this day, to this hour, which the church sanctifies. But the church is commercial. It's when you begin to realize all of that, no, which is not easy, that you begin to break out of the culture which has produced you and discover the culture which you really produced you. You see what I mean, but really brought you where you are. When you're in trouble, but I'm in trouble, I'm not seeing a Doris there and I don't know, you find yourself humming and moaning, you know, you know, something which no great grandfather did, no. And

what it's all about is the attempt now to excavate something which has been buried, you know, which you contain and lie contain and which your kid contains. It's got to carry, which will have to hand down the line for the sake of your kid and for the sake of future generations, and even for the sake of white people who are not to know this idea of what this means, because we have the edge over the people who think of themselves as white, that we have never been diluted into knowing, into believing what they believe. And that sounds like a contradiction. Yeah. You know, but in fact, you watch, man, you work for, you have to watch it. You don't know you're watching it. You watch it. But he's not watching you. He thinks he knows who you are, what you are. You don't know who he is because your life is in his hands. And you have to watch him because if you don't watch him, you're going to live from Monday to Tuesday.

It's as simple as that and without knowing you know him, you know him. He can't fool you. I'm not, I'm not at all. I mean, the civil rights movement, I came up in the 60s, which is like way after everybody else. But we always assumed that we knew white people, you know, that we really sort of like understood them. And I found out that if you don't understand yourself, we don't understand anybody else. And all you know, you know what I mean, but the snake is to watch a snake. And you know it's a snake, but you don't know it. Try it. You know what I mean? I try. Because it's too much between, it's too much emotion. There's so much fear. I can watch like the cat I work for. You know what I mean? He's going to watch me to something. But we know each else. I would say, I would hypothesize that he knows me better because his game is running. My and not. And that's what I've sort of always disagree with your generation on. As long as his game is running, he obviously knows me because he's, he's I'm playing. He doesn't say jumping. I'm saying how high he knows me. You may be right, but I would put it in another way. I would, I would, I would, I would suggest to this. Since his game is running,

he hasn't got to know you. Because his game is running. No, you're part of the game is running. He hasn't got to know you. I would think the one of the reasons that the Americans are in such trouble now is because the game is running. It was running until until, up until up until only yesterday, really. What you believe today, you know, and all of a sudden to the American astonishment, the Americans are suddenly discovered that people in the world don't like them. Yes. Now, I always knew that because I didn't like them. You know, I love some. Well, there's two people that are unlikable. And there's two people in the world that's not likable, amassed in a slate. Exactly. Exactly. You know, we will never, never, never get, you know, get precise categories for that very loaded statement. You know, that is where the truth is. Have you liked them? So the question, I mean, for me, the question has always been power. Yes.

And for, like, you all, the question has been morals. You know, I never wanted to be the most moral person in the world. I would like, I mean, I would sell my soul. You know, what is the profit of the man to gain the world and lose his soul, the world? You know, I mean, the world, that's what a profit. I know. So you take the soul, you know, at least the thing that's spiritual, take the world, give me Jesus, give me the world. You know, even though it's losing 25 % of its energy, every 100 years or something like this. Oh, please don't leave us. Don't leave everything you hear. No, but I'm saying I sound like a son, you know, even though it's polluted, ugly, dirty, give it to me. Speaking of me, I will take it. But speaking, speaking, I agree with you, I agree with you. Speaking of speaking for myself, but also speaking as a representative of my generation. But it's probably safer to speak only for myself, really. I know that in my own case, what I felt and still feel, perhaps in a different way, but I felt very strongly, and he is, for example, I was going to be

all over it. Marching me down, there's obviously high waves of Martin. Look, I left the church and I was 17 years old, you know, I'm not really been into a church since except, you know, I had to go for various fundraising rallies or this or that. And I was not exactly the kind of Christian that Martin was, if I could be described as Christian at all. It's hard to be the kind of Christian. But I liked him. I loved him, in fact. And I knew that something was happening through him. And my concern was, yes, the world. But I'd seen why people had done to the world. And I'd see why people had done to their children, you know, because in gaining the world, they had lost something. They lost. No, they lost the ability to love their own children. Which is the same thing, you know, and I didn't want that to happen, if I may say so, to you.

It was not a matter of morals so much. As a matter of being forced in my own case to suggest, to keep suggesting that though it wasn't deep, no, a matter of power, power without the word morals is misleading, power without, power without some sense of oneself isn't mean other kind of stability. And the black people would then become exactly why people have the come. You know what I mean? Yeah, there's a danger. You know, I also accept this that danger is not it's not up to me to tell anybody how to run. You know, I can only speak is is what I am. I'm a kind of poet. And if I'm a kind of poet, and I'm responsible for my own point of view, do the people who have produced me and the people who will come after me, you know, so that when the Holocaust comes, and it will come, you know, eventually, eventually, no matter how simple, black and white turns may be today, life is not that simple. And sooner or later, if I do my work

as I should do it, when I needed, I'll be there. You know what I mean? And the people listening, I know what you mean, because I think the most important, I think that I do, because I think the most important thing for any of us is when when what comes or when what we know will come comes, that we have the strength to say, yeah, that's right. And I was born on 94th and you DM me, so I'll say yeah. And we'll also be able to write at the storm, but what is more important is not so much writing at the storm for you, Nicky and me, Jimmy, you know. But in my mind's eye, there's always that kid, he's going to be here when you're gone. When I'm long gone, and my point of view is it is about the children. It is about the children. We have to give the children something, which in a way was after all given to us that we had to learn how to translate it, because your kid will be moving in a very different world than the one of which I grew up, but you won't know anything about it. Oh,

all the women which you grew up, which will be remote for him, and yet he comes out of it and has got to carry it much further than you are able to carry it. He's got to have respect for it, but not be trapped by it. Precisely. You have to give both, give it to him and liberate it, liberate him from it. You know. And I think that kind of thing has been lacking. Like I think one of the nicest things that we created almost as a generation, and it wasn't us because Martin Delaney and those people were way before us, but just the fact that we could say, hey, I don't like white people. Mm -hmm. It's a great generation. It was beginning of, of course, being able to like them. Exactly. Exactly. Which, of course, it upsets them, but that's their problem. The problem really is a kind of, we were talking earlier before the show began about the kind of incomprehension that somebody's face needs to kind of describe, but this is a very simple situation. Like people don't like going to jail, and you see the man's face, and he looks astonished. What? People don't like going to jail, and then you pull back.

Has that really go on? And you live with this all your life, and what you watch is that he knows it really. He doesn't think that you know it. He doesn't think anybody will tell him. And if it comes in, as we were saying earlier, if he allows that to enter into his guts, he's a very different person. He may explode. He doesn't know what will happen. If he allows this apprehension of someone else's experience, enter into him. Right. Because he's befetching his experience. And this is the crisis of the age. This is my mouth. I'm really mad at him when he said that white is a state of mind. Okay. On a certain level, because I tend to be parochial one thing, and I tend to care about Afro -Americans, which I would define as the sons and daughters of slaves and slave owners. You know what I mean? That isn't, by the way, some very parochial to me. It's very parochial because I don't care about my third brother's and sisters and

things like that that I'm sure I should. But as we... You mean you're responsible for a certain situation? I just can't deal with it. I think that if everybody dealt with their own little situation, if I deal with my block, and you deal with your block, and Malcolm said that too, yeah. So when we deal with fight as being like a state of more, Malcolm said everything, which I would grant. I mean, he encounters. But as we begin to try to deal, you know what I mean, with the world, we found that a lot of things break down, and we found that frequently a white face goes with a white mind. Occasionally a black face goes with a white mind. Very seldom a white face will have a black mind. But we found the frequent situation as a white face has a white mind. Yeah, but I know what I mean. So for the few states that you would make it unfortunate? No, I know. I wouldn't... I wouldn't... I wouldn't... I wouldn't argue that at all. It doesn't make any difference to me. I said one somewhere. You know, a cop is a cop. Well, cop is a white. And you know, and you may be a very nice man, I've never got the time to figure that out. You know, I know it's got a unicorn and a gun. I have to relate to him that

way. That's the only way to relate to it at all. Because one of us may have to die. You know, in New York, there's a big campaign going on to humanize the policemen. And they have post -build boards upstate. And they have a picture of a big cop building over this little blonde girl. And the signs say, and some people call him peed. And I wanted to buy a billboard. I told her for them, and I want to buy a billboard and show this big cop and this 14 -year -old kid with 30 bullets in him and say, and some people call him peacemaker. You know what to do. One thing, one thing the right hand's very sad. Get this for the guy. When we had that famous meeting with Bobby Kennedy, Lorraine said to Bobby, it was also dead. Lorraine said to Bobby, and I said something about black manhood. I don't know if you've been talking about black men. And Lorraine said she wasn't worried about black men because they don't know

very well. I don't think so. She was very proud of them. But she said, oh Bobby, she said, I'm very upset about the state of that civilization which produced that photograph of that white cop in Birmingham, standing on that black woman's neck. Yeah, but it's a safer white manhood. But again, that's a moral position. Well, you can follow what I mean by that. Yeah, I do. I do. That means that we're on top of the situation by being on the bottom. And many of us, I'm not quite like to see it the other way. I'm not quite that romantic or even one easy word, moral, quite that moral. I simply know I think I know. Look, I'm not a financier. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not a practical man, so to speak, you know. And what I am,

and I know I know the choices I've had to make in my own life to be able to shave in the morning, to look myself in the face in the morning. Now, I'm not so moral as you see here and say that if somebody had a gun pointed at my brother's head that I would pray for him, you know. I'm not about to tell you, you know, that I'm riding candles every day and every night for the soul of J. Edgar Hoover, you know. I wonder if I'm not moral at all. I don't care what happens to Hoover and all his tribe. At all, what I do care what happens to you, you know. And if I am moral, which I don't really think I am, it's the word that you keep bringing up. The relationship I know, I know, I know, the relationship between morality and power is a very subtle one.

You know, because power ultimately with no morality is not any longer power. You're going to call us playing a powerful nation. You can't call Frank or powerful man. He's got a whole nation in jail, but that's not power. No, you know what I mean? Exactly, you know, he's getting this and running. Precisely, precisely. Now, when our game starts running, and after all, after all, baby, we have survived. The roughest game in the history of the world. You know, we really have, no matter what we say against ourselves, no matter what our limits are, hang up, we have come through something, you know. And if we can get this far, we can get further. You know, and we got this far by means which no one understands, including you and me. We're only beginning that apprehended. And you're a poet, precisely, because you are beginning to apprehend it and put it into a form, you know, which will be useful for your kid and his kid, you know, and for the world. Because we're not obliged to accept the world's definitions.

Just because white people say they're white, we're not obliged to believe it. You know, just because the Pope says he's a Christian, we're not obliged to believe it. You know, we have to make our own definitions and begin to rule the world that way, because kids, white and black, cannot use what they have been given. You know, they're rejecting it. They're rejecting it. Nobody wants to become the president of Pan Am or the governor of California, or a spew or to argue, the kids want to live, you know. And we have out of a terrifying suffering, a certain sense of life which everybody needs. You know, and that's morality for me. You know, use the word morals, I would use the word energy. Okay. You see what I mean? I can follow that name. You know, it's a very mysterious endeavor, isn't it? You know, because the key is love. It's hard to figure out black people. No,

really. I mean, you know, you know, it's very hard because you say, let's say somebody, you've been out of the church for a long time, okay? I grew up, of course, in a Baptist church. And I really dig the church. I think it's a very cool, I can't dig the theology, but the music and the energies of the church. Yes. But then I went to the New York Community Corps, I had it's anniversary recently, it's first anniversary. And I went up to an A &E Zion church, this is a matter of fact. And the lady was singing, some lady was singing, yes, Jesus loves me. And people started shouting. You know, I mean, yes, people were shouting. And it hit me as I was sitting there. My God, there's a so -called black militant. I have nothing stronger to offer than Jesus. Yeah, but you see, yeah, but you have a, you baby. And that was in my, it blew, it's in my body. You have a church and he thought of it. I said, hey, that was testifies, ain't it? Baby, what we did with Jesus was not, was, no, was not supposed to happen. No, no, no. We took him, we took that cat over and made him ours. He's nothing but whatever to do

with that white Jesus in Montgomery, Alabama, that white church. We did something else with him, we made him ours. Some of you know, he was always really a nigga, because weeks don't come from Israel. You had to be fairly dark. Well, white people really deal with God. And black people from over, you know, they don't even deal with God. You know, they don't deal with God. They deal with God for them seems to be some, some metaphor for purity and for safety. You know, the whole heart of the Christian legend has always been, and sometimes for impressing is being, no, really I've seen, it's the key to all the dirty jokes to come afterwards. You know, can you imagine what would happen to you, Niki? I married to you. I got to work. I come home and you say to me, baby, you know what happened today? You said, no, what happened? Well, you know, the Holy Ghost came back. Oh, he did, did he? And Joe, no. The Holy Ghost

was with my aunt and pregnant. Now, I might, I might, no, I might look at the heart of you. That was really vulnerable. I might, I might try to find that cat. The Holy, the Holy, the Holy, the Holy, who? The Holy, who? The Holy Ghost. This has been believed by millions of people who lived and died by, for 2 ,000 years. And when you're tackled, you're accused of being blasphemous. I think the legend itself is a blasphemy. What is wrong with a man and a woman sleeping together, making love to each other and having a baby like everybody else? It's true. It's not a wise and son of God got to be born immaculately. Aren't we all the sons of God? That's a blasphemy. But we're not all the sons of God. Well, it depends on what you mean

by God. It depends on who's doing it. I've claimed in this, my father. And I've given him a great, great value to now and the time to learn until it's over. Because God is our responsibility. Well, I agree with that. Yeah. A lot of people don't realize they think that we are God's responsibility. No, no, no, no. But it's what we're aiming for, 30 million of us. That's right. And God's only hope is us. That's true. No. If you don't make your hearing, I'm gonna make it easier. Now, people are funny about sex, which I never understood. Well, it's not about sex, you know, it's not about sex, sex is not really the problem. Love is the problem. No. Whether you're a kid, when you're a 16 -year -old boy, a 15 -year -old boy, love, what does he want really? He wants to release. And it doesn't, as long as you get that moment yet to do really with love, because love is something which comes much later, really. You know, a kid loves you in a certain way because he needs

you. But later on when you're a man or a woman, it has to be much more reciprocal. You love somebody because you need each other. But it's not, it was on cable of this idea, you know, when you're 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, when everything is sexual, and everything is being discovered. You know, as much as many of my kids turn into junkies, which you won't go into at the moment, let's come back to it, you know. But the great question is not that. The great question is, you see, if it seems to me that the black male, situation in the black male, is in microcosm, the situation in the Christian world, the price of being a black man in America, God bless you. I'm sorry. It's all right. The price you had to pay, the price you expected to pay. I would you have to outwit, is your sex. No, black man is forbidden by definition, this is black, to assume the roles, burdens, the duties, and

the joys of being a man. In the same way that my child, just in your body, was not, did not belong with me, but to the master. He could be sold at any moment. You know what I mean? And this is a role, the man's sexuality, I mean your role, the man's sexuality. You have destroyed his possibility to love anybody. You know, those sex and love are not the same thing. If the man's sexuality is gone, then his possibility, his hope of loving, is also gone, you know. He has no way to express it. He has limited way to express it. He has absolutely no flaw in which to dance, no room in which to move, no way to get from one day to the next. Because they make love to you. Is that the same thing as taking you? You know, and it's a journey, which most people have got to make with each other. Why did black men, for do we allow this to happen? Look, when we begin to talk about, when I

begin to talk about, you know, the situation of black men, I mean, anyone, I'm nearly 50, so that I got to avoid sounding, you know, anyway, defensive, because no, I don't mean that, I don't mean that I think you're attacking me, but you ask me a question which I'm trying to answer as honest as I can, I have to look back over my own life, you know, and you save yourself if you have any sense at all, and if you're lucky enough, you know if you lose your center and let's say the center is your sex. If you lose that, if you love that to be destroyed, then everything else is gone, and you had to figure out a way of saving it, from the landlord. Because I draw, I had to watch my father, and what my father had to endure to raise nine children on 27 dollars, 50 cents a week, when he was working.

Now, when I was a kid, I didn't know what the man was going through at all. I didn't know why he was always in a rage, I didn't know why he was impossible to live with, but I had not had to go through yet his working day, and he couldn't quit his job because he had the kids to feed. You know, he couldn't say as, you know, as our kids can, I don't like why if you people can't say anything, he lived his whole life in silence except in the church. You know, how can you explain to a five -year -old kid, you know, my boss called me a nigger and I quit, and the kid's belly is empty and you see it, you know, and you've got to raise the kid. You know, you've got to raise the kid, and your manhood is being slowly destroyed, out of our day by day, your woman's watching it, you're watching her watch it, you know, and the love that you have for each other is being to be destroyed out of our

day by day, it's not her fault, it's not your fault, but there it goes because the pressures on which you live are in human. My father finally went mad and I understood when I became a man, how that could happen. It wasn't like he didn't love us, he loved us. It wasn't like he didn't love his wife, his grandmother, he loved her, but he couldn't take it. Day after day and hour after hour being treated like a nigger, on that job and in those streets and on those subways, and then coming home to his children who did not understand them at all, who were moving further and further away from them because they were afraid of him, and also which is even worse, afraid of the situation, the condition, which he represented. He was, after all for a kid, you begin to see when you're called a nigger, you look at your father because you think your father can rule

the world or make it things that, you know, and your father cannot do anything about it, and then you begin to despise your father and you realize, oh, that's what a nigger is, and it's not your father's fault, and it's not your fault. It's the fault of the people who hold the power because they are deliberately trained your father to be a slave, and they're deliberately calculated that if he is a slave, you're not a slave, you will also accept it, and it'll go on forever, and slavery will last a thousand years, but the slaveholder said and believed, and now the bill is in, and they want from me or from you, sympathy and understanding. I understand it all too well, and I have all the sympathy in the world for that spiritual disaster, for I have no pity. The bill is in, we paid it, now your

turn. It's a, it's like a funny situation to be in, because like we were poor, but maybe unfortunately for somebody like me, not poor enough to relate to it, and that, you know, we had enough deep into it like that, things like that, so that my relationship to that whole syndrome, which remains true, I'm 28, to this day, is that I really don't understand it. I don't understand how one hand is, so you're talking about like a black man, that he can be nothing in the streets, and so fearful in his home, that he can, he can be brutalized by some white person somewhere, and then come home and treat, you know what I mean, me, my mother, it's the same way that he was being treated, which perpetuates, I mean, you take me, I'm not married, right? I couldn't play my mother, you know what I mean, I just couldn't deal with it, I said no, no, no, no, this is also true, isn't your mother played that role you haven't got to? I couldn't, but you haven't got to, that's a point, because she did, but her mother did,

yes, but that's how we got here, what I really am trying to say is I don't want us to underestimate the price paid for us. I have a great deal of respect for those people, for my parents, for people that I don't know, for the whole, you know, everybody who's suffered, I'm not saying it, I'm just saying that it's a phenomenon to me, how you could be mistreated, and then come home, and mistreat someone the same way, and all the principal Nikki, principal Nikki, you say mistreated, or I say mistreated, no, but in the front, the mind of the president was doing it, he's not mistreating it. Well, I'm not dealing with that, well, I'm not going to even, I mean, let's not for a minute, let's say in the mind of, let's say your father, who is just an example, the mind of my father, you know what I mean, he is being mistreated, I'm not going to deal with the crack that is mistreating him, I'm going to deal with him, he knows that he is not being treated with respect, do him, as a person, as a black man, okay, in order to like get that together when he comes into that house, he begins to like brutalize my mother, for example, you see what I mean, which

becomes like a phenomenon to me, because I don't like white people, and I'm afraid of black men, right? If you could follow what I'm saying about anybody writing a letter and saying sister, you know what I mean? Okay, so what do you do? Listen, you have to, I think, you know, it's a cycle. Of course it is, but you see, this is one of the reasons I, this is one of the reasons I would don't protest, but try to make clear the words white and black don't mean anything, you know, the man come, a man comes home, you know, he is in a situation which he cannot control, he is a human being, it's got to come out somewhere, a poor Puerto Rican several years ago, for example, no, it's a, it's a, it's a legend, but I can see if this happened, why it happened? Kat came home and the three months old baby was screaming, you know, as babies do, and he killed it, he didn't mean to kill it. He picked up and stood against the wall, he didn't mean to kill it, it wasn't that. I understand,

you know, because I've been there, I know something about that, I don't know if it happened to a woman, it happened to a man, because you cannot do anything, they got you, they got you, they got you by the throat of my balls, and of course it comes out, it comes out where, where would it come out? It comes out in the person closest to you. I was going to say that's so wrong, because what you perpetually, it may be wrong. I hate to hear those kind of damage. But Nikki, it may, your, Nikki, it may be wrong, cause it's wrong, but we're dealing with human beings. You know, well, can I be romantic about human nature, can I be romantic about one's own nature? That's not fair, I don't think that I'm romantic, but... No, I don't mean that you are. I haven't seen how the community, and even today in 1971, even today there are divisions based on those same kind of problems, so that the black men say, in order for me to be a man, you walked 10 pages behind me, you know what I mean? It means nothing, I can walk 10 pages behind the dog,

it means nothing to me, but if that's what he needs, I'll never get far enough behind him, for him to be a man. You know what I'm, I'll never walk that slowly. No, Nikki, if at the risk of, there's a very great risk of pulling, see me in the full rank. No, no. You know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. No, no, no, I mean that, but what I do mean is that, what I do mean is that, great things which seem, if I may say so, new to you, are not new to me. Do you know what I mean? So I can say then, okay, I see what the cat's doing, and how long, I can tell you almost exactly how long he will do it. You know, I know that a great deal of what passes with black men is right now is nothing but a fashion. You know, at best. You know, at best, something will rest, something will remain. What is important about it is not to the tales, nothing, nothing given, you know, people, you know,

given so -called leaders or any of that jazz, you know, what is important is the impulse out of which it has come, the ferment out of which it has come, which it reveals to, and what's valuable and will remain the rest will go. Yeah, but what's, you know what I mean? Yeah, but again, what's sort of said to be is that the same syndrome that say our father's set up, coming from many, you know what I mean? My father is your age, and the same syndrome is that they set up. Well, you know, he's a little bit older, 55. But the same old 55, thank you, baby. Well, seven years old. The same syndrome, which is being set up, is being perpetuated, is that once again, the black man is becoming the figure to slide away from. You know what I mean? That once again, the black man is the figure that you say, well, I can't, I can't handle that. And if you, if you visit with the States, or you know, you talk to people enough, you'll see that that same syndrome, you know, the little guys that are standing around crossing the arms and they're not lovable. They're not giving any love. They could give a damn about me. You know what I mean? And that's unfortunate

because I need love. Yes, but we don't, we don't, what you're saying is very, very serious. I'm not in the least knowing it because you're perfectly right. It's the only way we can get through it, I think. It's a man in a great deal of view, but one's kind of a choice with man in a great deal of view. Is that you want to look? Let us say, let us say I'm King Oliver. I'm pretty good musician. I'm very good musician. And somebody called, let us say, Bing Cosby. You know, you couldn't carry a tomb from here to here, right? No, I couldn't. Right? That's true. Now I watch this little white boy, you call me an air. Becoming

me, you're an air. Many times over, I can't get a job. You know, and time goes on. You get older, you get more weary. And since you cannot get a job, you're morale, you're going to be destroyed. And the body begins to fail you, your death approaches, or because being a man, you've never been able to execute what a man ought to be able to do. And this enough, anything that you have done or not done by some arbitrary sentence, how in the world if I can't get a job, if I can even get my, my, my axe out of the pawn shop, if I can even, you know, get money, get on the

subway, how am I going to love anybody except in such an awful pain and rage that nobody could bear it. I'm not trying to defend it. I'm trying to make you see it. You see what I mean? I do, but because maybe I'm hopeful, and because I've structured my life in a way that I won't. I don't, by the way, think that what I'm describing is any longer true for your generation. I don't mean that. But I see the same, what I keep saying is that I see the same syndromes and the same guys that I have to deal with now. Yes, but my dear, but my dear, what you have to see is also, you have to look, think about the kid, think about the kid, you know, what you're going through is one thing, and I'm not trying to minimize it. I'm not trying to, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not trying to, I don't, I don't mean you personally. Yeah, I'm not, the generation is nice. Yes, I don't mean, no, I don't mean, I don't, I don't mean you're Nikki, exactly. No, I hope that nobody, I'm not talking about me that. No, no,

I know, I know. But what I do mean is that simply as soon, for the moment, the kid is useful to metaphor because it, it carries you past one moment, into another moment, because no matter what happens to me or to you, one's responsibility is somewhere else. So it's a terrible Tuesday and a wretched Friday, but, you know, the kids don't know that, and then you begin to see, then you begin to see that what looks so awful when they're on Friday, or is so awful, is awful, but it's not eternal. You can get through it, and when you get through it, you can understand it. Okay, we're not like in discipline, but I'm trying to maybe get you to relate to, is that, and I lay it on black then, because I'm a black woman. You're right, because I'm sure it's that arbitrary. Well, you're

right, too. But a guy, let's say, a guy's going with girl, you're going with Maybell, and Maybell gets pregnant, obviously, and you can't speak to Maybell, because you don't have the money for a crib, right? She doesn't need a crib. The baby's going to sleep someplace. If you could follow me for two seconds, wait, wait, the baby's going to sleep someplace. The baby's going to eat something, but what she needs at that moment is a man. And in order, if the man functions as a man, which is not necessarily a provider for all of us, because everybody can understand why you can't buy something. You don't have a job. You don't have a job when you're always going to bed. Why you can't get a job because she got pregnant? You understand there's no job, but what she needs as a man to come by and say, hey, baby, you look good. And black men refuse to function like that, because they say, I want to bring the crib when I come. You're never going to get the crib. Baby, bring yourself. Baby, I agree with you. I agree with you. I understand what you're saying. But let me tell you this. You may be absolutely right. You are right in the point of view.

If it doesn't, it doesn't have a job. But you have to understand my point of view. And in my point of view, well, if you were pregnant, I would act very differently. That's me, that's something else. But from the man's point of view, given the fact, as we said much earlier, that the standards of the civilization into which you were born, a first outside of you. And by the time you get to be a man, they're inside of you. And this is not susceptible to any kind of judgment. It's a fact. If you treat it a certain way, you become a certain kind of person. If certain things that describe you as being real, they're real for you whether they're real or not. And in this civilization, a man who cannot support his wife and his child is not a man. And this is also in the, for example, in the welfare rules, you know, the black man has always been treated as a slave. And of course, he reacts that way one way or

another. You know, and you can blame him on a human level if you like. But I think it's more interesting to have you have to understand it. The bag the cat is in. But it's so, you know, because how can I? You know, this is not being rational. You know, I may love, I may love you, especially if I love you. How can the world, I can't come with nothing. But it's not. I know it doesn't make any sense to me, but it's not like that. You see, when we talk about, and we talk about the children, right? When we talk about like, let's say, my lover, your nephew is like that. We talk about you. How are we going to create the new child in the same old syndrome? Well, somebody has to fake it for enough. You know, somebody has to say, I don't know, I can't buy your bicycle. You don't need one. You smile about it so the kid can say, I'm not afraid of that. Sometimes that happens and I draw. But it's not enough to talk about the group. Yeah,

yeah, yeah, but wait. We're talking about the group. Phone, phone, phone, phone, phone, maybe. You know, it has begun. Something has begun. The fact that we're talking about it is a beginning. It's very important indeed. Look, I've had to learn my own life. You know, I want this. I want it Friday. And Friday comes and I've worked in my behind -off to get something done that don't come. It doesn't come in 20 years. Then you use that 20 years. Look, life's a very short and very long time. It is, really it is. And it's very important not to get hung up on any given detail because what is there, like the fact that you're a woman and the fact that I'm an aunt, that's going to be there forever. And we're going to deal with that forever. We're going to be beginning here. And we have to deal with it from day to day. Day to day, you know, if we love each other, we

both know it. The tragedy is we both know it. And the greater tragedy is that it's destroyed by things with nothing to do with you and nothing to do with me. A man is built as he's built. And there's nothing one can do about that. A man is not a woman. That's true. You know, and whether he's wrong or right, look, if we're living in the same house, you're my wife and my woman, I had to be responsible for that house. And I'm not allowed to be responsible for that house. I'm no longer in my own eyes. This is making things what you may think of me. In my own eyes. That's where I'm not a man. That's us. If I'm indeed make a difference what I think about it. Because I could be perfectly willing in this matter fact. I am perfectly willing to concede that first of all, a man is a natural aggressor. You know what I mean? I'm here if I walked up you and said, let's go to bed. You are the aggressor. And that's it. Because it already pissed me off of you. I could fool

myself. I could fool my friend. But yeah, I got it. It depended on you. You see? So I'm never confused on that level. But I've seen so many people get so hung up in such crappy superficial kind of things that for lack of being able to bring a stake in the house, they won't come. I can get my own damn stake. I need you. And that's what the black, no, real. I mean, that's me to me with the black. Yeah, but making your personal. Making your perfectly right. But you're being... But you're being perfectly rational. But it's a rational situation. Yeah, but love is not a rational situation. Love must be. It must be rational. Because this is a rationality that we have to know where we can destroy people. I quite agree with you, but this is something we have to confront. But I was running through. I was about to get married. And for several reasons, I threw my wedding rings in the river. And that was when I split. No, decided I would leave. I think it married part of it because I had no future. It's very, very important. You had a future. I had no future. No, you got to go back

to where I was. Yeah, 22. No, I had no future. I couldn't keep a job. No, because I couldn't stand the people I was working for. And nobody could call me a nigger. Because I was small. No, no. So I split, you know. Now, I love that girl. And I wanted children. But I already had eight. And they were all starving. Yeah. And for my point of view, it would have been an act of the most criminal irresponsibility to bring another mouse in the world, which I could not feed. Yeah, but you see, those weren't your children. Those were your father's children. My father was dead. It's nothing. And as far as they knew, then. It's nothing, but one cannot. And I'm not your life. You know, but one cannot be responsible for what one has. I said we are not being rational, but I say we must. I mean, that's not for her. We must

be rational. There was my brothers and sisters. They were your brothers and sisters. But they were your father's children and your mother's children. That was my father's responsibility. As far as I was concerned, they belonged to me. Do you know what your life, and I'm saying it like that? You know what I mean? I'm trying to do you know what your life looks like, though? And this is what's happening also today. It looks like a black man can't make it with a black woman. If somebody looks at the two of us, man, we're the weirdest looking people on earth. Because you went your way, and I went my way. Which is saying the same thing. And that's sort of a shame. I can't have a black man standing with me. And you can't have a black woman. Because we wouldn't be who we are if we had. And that's the fact. But Nicky, we are nevertheless. We are here. We met. Oh, you and I met. But I'm talking about for the statement, man. You're looking like a Huey Newton. Yeah. He can't make it with a black, who could be his woman? We don't know. No, it's such a shame. We don't know that much about the man. We know what the image. Yeah, but we know what the, what we've seen. Let us forget the

image. We don't know anything at all about the man. We know a little bit. Let us assume we don't. Okay, let us assume. No. If it ends up ours, it's true. If it's true, that huey, for example. Can I make it with a black woman? I don't know that that's true. I don't know that it's true. I'm saying that to date. That is part of the trap. To make one believe that. I don't believe that myself. It's part of a societal illusion, which you're expected to believe. So you can react to it and be distracted from the main point, which is one's relationship to each other. We've come to the end of the first part of this two -part dialogue between Nicky and Jimmy, which as I told you earlier, we taped in London recently and edited for showing it this time. We hope you all will be able to be with us next week when Nicky Giovanni and James Baldwin continue their conversation. Until next week, then, this is Ellis Haste of saying good night from Seoul.

I guess if they had known that they were prisoners, they would have never been there. But they were all prisoners. You know, anybody in prison is a prisoner. But you have to act to them. What do you know? You know, the guards in Attica didn't know anything. They don't know any well -modied. Very long time. They're dead. That's the most of whom we're dead. That's their problem. They're children. Oh, in some sense, everybody's problem. Because I think all children are sacred. If you see what I mean. You know, kids are okay. And I would hate to see a kid. Seoul, a production of NET, Educational Broadcasting Corporation. This series is made possible in part by a grant from IMS interdisciplinary metropolitan systems incorporated. And I think that's the most important thing to do. I think that's the most important thing to do.

I think that's the most important thing to do. I think that's the most important thing to do. Thank you very much.